New York's Loss, Oakland's Gain

Al Pedrique had a good run as a minor league manager in the Yankees farm system, where he helped turn such prospects as Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird and Luis Severino into players ready to succeed. Things went especially well the last two seasons with the Triple-A Scranton RailRiders, finishing first both times and winning the 2016 International League championship. New York fans had the chance to meet him in last summer's YES Network series Homegrown: The Path to Pinstripes, which, while the season at Scranton, gave viewers a sense of how the skipper oversaw his young roster.
Joe Girardi's departure seemingly put Pedrique into the running for either the Yankee manager's job or a spot on its coaching staff. But Al never landed an interview, with Aaron Boone replacing Girardi. While that was made official on Monday, there was another announcement in the baseball world. Pedrique was named the Oakland A's first base coach.
Good for Pedrique, who parlayed his minor league success into a major league job. But how much of a loss will it be to the Yankees, who know the positive influence he was on so many of their young players -- with more of the ones Pedrique worked with, such as Miguel Andujar, Clint Frazier, Billy McKinney, Gleyber Torres and Justus Sheffield likely to advance to the Bronx in the next year -- and more top prosects moving from Trenton to Scranton in 2018.
An interesting aside: three of the young Oakland players Pedrique will likely be working with are former Yankee farmhands: James Kaprelian, Jorge Mateo and Dustin Fowler were sent to Oakland in the Sonny Gray deal at last summer's deadline. So at last a few familiar faces will say hi to Al once players begin reporting to camp in mid-February.

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